


The Photograph of Two Boys

by GanseysBlue



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Stanford Era, Wincest Love Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 20:12:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6023191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GanseysBlue/pseuds/GanseysBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is in Stanford and takes out an old photograph of himself and Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Photograph of Two Boys

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Wincest Love Week II, Day 3 for [deanfinite](deanfinite.tumblr.com) \- originally posted [here](http://deanfinite.tumblr.com/post/139080317378/wincest-love-week-day-3)

He touches the photograph he has hidden in the bottom of the drawer in his small dorm room. A photograph that shows a distant past, one he cannot quite remember ever existed. It looks so strange and out of place, considering the life he’s known and lived the years that preceded and that followed this photograph. He looks at the background; he looks at every detail, trying to find some resemblance in it, trying to find himself in this situation. He has done this so many times in the years before. He tries to grasp the why and how behind what he sees. He cannot put a finger on what brought it on, the smiles and ease in the faces of the people he is looking at. Faces that seem so foreign to him, although they’re so familiar.

It is a photograph of two boys, whose eyes are glistering with joy. Their faces show great smiles, maybe they were laughing when the photo had been taken. Their posture shows no worries, just ease. And they’re looking at each other, like nothing else in the world exists. It’s just them, and happiness. In this photograph they look like an entity, nothing could tear them apart, it’s them against the world and their weapon is their happiness. It radiates off them like bright rays of sunshine.

He touches his eyes. Tears are building up in them and they sting. He wishes he could go back and capture this moment not just in a photograph but in a memory that he would cherish and keep sacred forever. How could he not remember this moment, why couldn’t he feel how they felt?

He’s seen ghosts of the smaller boy’s smile and joy in recent months. It has only been a ghost, though, not as bright, not as alive. A joy that is so minimal that it dies before it reaches anybody else. But that’s more than he has ever seen on the other boy’s face, apart from this photograph. He tries to force himself remember a time where his brother appeared happy, really and truly happy. In their lives, they have experienced some good moments, and they have shared more smiles than this single one, but those moments never reflected true happiness. This photograph shows the single moment of true happiness in the boys’ lives. He longs to live this moment again.

What he can remember vividly is the complete and exact opposite of the expressions on this photograph. He lives through that moment every night, has done so for the last few months. He knows it will never let him go. He wishes to forget this, and in return remember the moment in the photograph as vividly. 

It happened the moment he walked out the door, and if someone had been there to take a photo, it would compare to this in one single way. It would show the same two boys, older and stronger. But their expressions were dark, and sad, and miserable. They reflected the most painful and tragic moment in their lives. Their faces were torn, their eyes red with tears, and there was no emotion in them but sadness. The air around them would scream of emptiness and distance. Where they were so close and united in the real photograph, they would have appeared two separate hearts, two separate people, living two separate lives that didn’t intersect. The look on the older boy’s face would stay the same. No ghost of the expression of the photograph to cross it ever again, just sadness and emptiness mixed together in one being.

He puts the photograph back in the bottom drawer, after one last touch of the older boy’s face, after one last tear that lands on his own. He can feel the pull again which he feels each time he looks at the photograph. A pull to the past, to forget all that happened before and after, and to create – to make up – a new memory for the moment captured there. To dream a life with the boy by his side, a life where their happiness conquered all evil, where there unity was enough to survive. He doesn’t want anything else, but he knows he can’t ever recreate this moment. When he walked away, he destroyed every chance for their happiness.


End file.
